Feast your eyes on this amalgamation of beautiful sight and sound … “Softbase”, by an eclectic musical outfit comprised of an architect, an author and a chanteuse, (Charles)Book&Record

Somewhere between Motown and the Illuminati lies (Charles)Book&Record. An architect, an author, and the chanteuse. Not so much a traditional “band” as they are storytellers, soundscape shapers, multi-media fabulists.

Born of a partnership between underground hip-hop producer/filmmaker/rammed-earth housing engineer Taj Easton (Tada), and vocalist/author/publisher Zack Wentz (Kill Me Tomorrow, Tender Buttons, The Dabbers, newdeadfamilies.com), with vocal contributions from Shelby Gubba (The Dabbers, Braaiins!), (Charles)Book&Record craft generous, invigorating, densely-textured, darkly-melodic pop that owes as much to classic calypso, traditional song, and crooner-era swing as it does to 80′s art-rock, Berlin School electronic music, and vintage R&B.

Taj Easton and Zack Wentz were also commissioned to create a soundtrack for the Andy Mingo film Romance, based on a story by Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club), which debuted in London at the Raindance Film Festival in the fall of 2012. (Charles)Book&Record were also tapped to produce a re-mix for Sufjan Stevens, which appears on his recent mixtape Chopped and Scrooged. Their re-mix/collaboration track with Foot Village has been streamed at Pitchfork and Impose.

(Charles)Book&Record‘s debut album, Leftover Magic (recorded and mastered at Singing Serpent studios in San Diego, CA), is the ideal introduction to their sci-fi-surrealist-soul sound. Eleven tracks developed over a year and a half, along with a video series (The Tryptych and The Dream Duo), exploring their vision of sonic-cinematic art: gazing both forward into a blurred destiny, and retrospectively across innumerable forgotten futures. “Pointing South,” the first video of the triptych, premiered via art magazine Juxtapoz,“Sentimental Ape”, the second video, at celebratory pop-culture magazine Geek, and “Tradition,” the third, at the cutting-edge literary blog HTMLGIANT.

Their latest video to the track “Softbase” goes beyond the comic-nightmare confines of The Dream Gulag explored in The Triptych to the other-dimensional realm of Burlaphead, showcasing the between-world beings that dwell there, and moving into the inner-chambers of Softbase itself.